Study Shows Black Baseball Players Decline in 2014

On Tuesday, April 15, all of the Major Baseball League players, managers, and fans wore No. 42 to honor the brave man Jackie Robinson who successfully broke the color barrier 67 years ago. While it is incredibly essential for the MLB personnel and fans to honor the legacy of Robinson, the MLB showed concerns about the decline of black baseball players in the league.

The Pew Research Center found last week Wednesday that the share of baseball reached a high of 18.7 percent in 1981, according to the Society for American Baseball Research. In 2014, 8.3 percent of players on opening day rosters were black. While the number of baseball player has declined, baseball has seen a rising share of white players.

Concerning diversity in baseball, research is an essential tool for thriving workforce diversity. The MLB was eager to find out whether the organization is successful in improving diversity or not. Last year, MLB commissioner Bud Selig decided to establish the research committees to study why black baseball players in the league were declining.

“I don’t want to miss any opportunity here,” Selig told the New York Times in a telephone interview from his office in Milwaukee last year. “We want to find out if we’re not doing well, why not, and what we need to do better. We’ll meet as many times as we need to come out to meaningful decision.”

The MLB needs to develop a strategy to improve workforce diversity. Selig hopes that the study will help the MLB research committees to find the results and understand why black baseball players were declining, and hopes that the MLB will bring more talented black baseball players in order to recover the diversity of baseball.

Improving workforce diversity can help the MLB grow and thrive. The MLB brings black baseball players, which can also make the MLB stronger, which helps improve the game attendance, its fans, and profit growth. Selig believes that black baseball players performance in sports is incredible. He wants black baseball players to hold a special place in American baseball tradition.

“I really think our history is so brilliant when it comes to African Americans,” Selig said. “You think about the late 1940s, 1950s — wow. And you look at that and you say yourself, ‘Why did it not continue, and what could we do to make sure it does continue?”